UNESCO and the ‘right’ kind of culture: Bureaucratic production and articulation

Abstract

There has been much debate on ‘culturespeak’ and the politics of culture, but the bureaucratic articulation of specific representations of culture has not received much attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article presents a double take on bureaucracy. On the one hand, I focus on the outcome of UNESCO’s bureaucracy: UNESCO promotes an all-inclusive culture perspective for ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations’, but there are limits to tolerance in this culture ideology. On the other hand, I focus on the social and pragmatic adaptation to the bureaucratic field and towards UNESCO’s keywords, as they are embedded with institutional authority in everyday practice. In conclusion, I briefly situate UNESCO’s culture ideology in relation to questions of recognition and redistribution.

Heritage agnosticism: a third path for the study of cultural heritage

“…I do not think that one could gain a realistic picture of how the World Heritage system works without such field research, and I doubt that reading UNESCO texts and decisions without such a realistic picture can do them full justice. In find confirmation for this in other fieldwork‐based and archival studies of the UNESCO heritage institutions (Bortolotto , ; Gfeller ; Hafstein , ; Kuutma ; Meskell , ; Rudolff ; Schmitt , ) and other UNESCO branches (Nielsen ). Heritage agnosticism is once again a good vantage point for such a research programme.…”

¿Giro decolonial en el patrimonio? La Liberation Heritage Route como alternativa poscolonial de activación patrimonial

“…Es también analizado como régimen del cuidado (regimen of care; Harrison, 2015), y muestra su evolución en la diversificación de la diferencia de discursos de conservación, restauración, salvaguarda o protección. Nielsen (2011), por su parte, analiza la ideología cultural de la UNESCO (sobre su aplicación al patrimonio) en relación a cuestiones de reconocimiento y redistribución, lo que supone en realidad su análisis sobre temas básicos de las teorías contemporá-neas sobre la justicia global.…”

Organizational Culture, Anthropology of

“…But the meaning of 'culture' has gone through several transformations (Nielsen, 2011;Wright, 1998a,b). With its overordinate aim to foster world peace, UNESCO uses the same key concepts of culture to order both its internal operations and to mobilize its participants throughout the world.…”

“…With its overordinate aim to foster world peace, UNESCO uses the same key concepts of culture to order both its internal operations and to mobilize its participants throughout the world. However, this relativism was tempered by an implicitly Western normative judgment that some cultural practices, like genocide or honor killings, should be condemned (Wright, 1998b: 179-180;Nielsen, 2011). Initially, the conception of culture was like Arnold's, as the canon of great art and architectural and archaeological monuments with universal value, which would be disseminated by an intellectual and political elite through UNESCO.…”

“…Nielsen's (2011) study of the UNESCO bureaucracy shows that this is not the site of such contestation. Where in UNESCO do these contests over the organization's meanings of culture take place?…”